We Are The World…Revisionist History

Yeah, it’s the preseason. Heck, practice doesn’t even start for another coupla’ weeks. We love to spend this time boasting and worrying and extrapolating to make the case we need for being smart.

It is easily the most lawyerly time of the college basketball season, September. Your picks are always solid. Granted, we all know preseason prognostication is about as scientific as laundry. (Make a couple of piles and throw the soiled into one.) It also carries a shelf-life of approximately two sprained ankles and a failed econ mid term. By the time Your Team is 10-5 (1-1 in conference) what some hack wrote in August (or April, in Lindy’s case) doesn’t matter.

But we have fun here, especially at other people’s expense. That why, thanks to Extra P. over at The Extrapolater, we’re going to take those shots this season. This is the first of hopefully many collaborative posts where the Blogging Elite (defined as blogs I like to read) combine wit and intelligence to entertain and inform you.

Feel free to jump in with your feedback on…

The Lindy’s rankings. Eric felt it would be right to take their preseason rankings, add our intelligence, and revise them. The challenge: you get to pick one team and move it up or down in the rankings as far as you like. The only rule: explain.

“So I’m driving around Norfolk last weekend, in hot pursuit of a brace of high-end malted beverages to quaff in pregame celebration of William and Mary’s gridiron contest with Liberty (CAA football, baby!), and I cruise past the Constant Center on the campus of Old Dominion University. I’m not from Norfolk – in fact, I’m generally discouraged from visiting as a result of some long-ago college-era shenanigans – so I hadn’t seen the ODU facility before, or at least hadn’t looked at it closely. With all that as preface, then, let me note for the record that the Ted is one righteous-looking collegiate athletic barn.

I’m not nearly as qualified as the noble MGL and the talented Extra P to assess the actual basketball-related bonafides of the 2007-2008 CAA hoops contenders, so my contribution here will be a bit more, um, random. (Which, frankly, is in very good keeping with the spirit of Gheorghe: The Blog, my home course.) I figured choosing William and Mary, my alma mater, as the team on the move would be a copout, even though I believe that the 10-year anniversary of the fabled Moran/Phillips Team of Destiny is good for at least 3 wins for the Green and Gold this year. (For the record, Bill Phillips and his hormones destroyed Charlie Woollum’s program just as it was turning the corner. Transferring to be closer to a girl? At least make up an excuse.)

Instead, I’m taking a cue from the Big Blue Beast’s snazzy digs and moving them up Lindy’s Ladder from 7th to 4th. The Monarchs lose some serious talent, with 1st-team All-CAA standout Valdas Vasylius (cripes, no wonder MGL abbreviates that name), 2nd-teamer Drew Williamson, and rugged inside presence Arnaud Dahi moving on. But they’ve still got the league’s best moustache (and, let’s not kid ourselves, one heckuva coach) courtside in Blaine Taylor and two of the conference’s great names in Etoile Imama and Abdi Lidonde. More importantly, Gerald Lee gets a chance to prove he’s the real deal. ODU needs a couple of their highly-touted youngsters to step up, but it says here that they will – and they’ll defend the hell out of the ball regardless.

And if they don’t, they’ve still got that great-looking arena to fall back upon.”

***

Next: Eric, from The Extrapolater, where breadth is paramount: you can read minor league baseball, rugby, and some rookie rater comparing everyone to Albert Pujols. Or something like that.

“I am going to resist the homer urge to move Old Dominion anywhere. If I’m honest with myself, I can only admit that this team has lost too much, and has too many question marks, to qualify for much more than a middle-of-the road assessment at this point.

The team I will move is Drexel. Bruiser’s a good, experienced coach. He’s got a good team. But that’s not why. I am moving the Dragons because I believe that karma is in Bruiser’s favor. He got ganked but hard by the NCAA last year, and I think the hoop gods will make it up to him with a good conference run. I cannot and will not pick him to take the conference from Maynor and the Rams, but I will concede that Drexel will make it interesting by coming in a very competitive second in the CAA. Bruiser and his man-jewelry are going to the Big Dance this year. Mark it down.”

“Instinctively I looked to ratchet the Tribe up the standings, having sipped–albeit judiciously–from the “Shaver Sounds Like Savior” punch bucket (and heartily endorsing the Bigus Dickus-like name of W&M’s leading scorer).

Upon further review, however, I predict that my alma mater actually gets leapfrogged by the resurgent Blue Hens of Delaware. William & Mary has had their trouble topping UD in other sports, anyway, but a quick glance at who’s back from the atrocious cellar-dwelling team of a year ago shows all the signs of a leap in the standings for Delaware. Herb “Half-” Courtney and Brian “Breakfast Club” Johnson sound like guys you want doing your Physics homework for you, but they’re legitimate returning stars for the “ass-kickin’ chickens.”

Factor in a pair of transfers from Georgetown & Nebraska, and there might be some noise in Newark this year . . . that isn’t hollering about all those damn toll booths. The key to actually competing in the CAA is whether still-green coach Monté Ross can harness the talent and turn potential into production. Stay tuned. Betting against Delaware sports this year has already cost me the insult of being forced to publicly sport a hat with a chicken on it later this year.

(Not to mention the humiliation of having to endure a text message that read, “Squawk, squawk, baby.”) This time I’ll go with the Hens and call them a 6 or 7 seed. Squawk, squawk, indeed.”

***

My contribution?

I’m going to move the Poor Bills, aka Nor’Easter, aka the Northeastern Huskies, WAY up the ladder. If this team finishes last in the conference this year, I will ride a bike, in a thong, only, from Richmond to Boston. In February. (Line up your charitable causes now.)

This is the case of some guy seeing three seniors graduating from a team that has no “big names,” other than the conference frosh of the year who is built like Paris Hilton. The dude has never seen some of these guys play—Manny Adako is a horse—and Bill Coen can coach. Nor’Easter is clearly in the middle strata of the conference. I’m putting them at sixth, but they could be anywhere from 4th to 9th.

It’s like this. Ever since they came into the CAA, Nor’Easter has been treated with shrugs. They are located in Boston and play in the winter—between the Bruins and Patriots and Red Sox Hot Stovers they aren’t supposed to be any good. Filler material to keep the brackets from being all screwed up. But all they’ve done is win basketball games and there’s no reason why it won’t happen this year.

And so you don’t think this is a love-fest, I’ve got to say that the players they lost weren’t exactly all-world. Adrian Martinez was serviceable, and Bobby Kelly really just a role player. I’ll give you Bennet Davis, though. Still, the difference is that Coen is bringing some legit talent to the floor.